Welcome back.
Now that you have made the appropriate hardware upgrades and (I assume) have FSX fully installed...
FINE TUNE FSX FOR YOUR SYSTEM
Each and every PC system varies and it is your computer's combination of hardware and software that will determine what features (sliders) you are able to select, and at what level (high, low, off). FSX is a title where you will more than likely have to make sacrifices in one area, or the other due to current hardware limitations.
You also have to consider what you define as an acceptable number of frames per second for both a smooth moving image and responsive control.
I consider the bare minimum frames per second equal to film (24 FPS), or full-motion video (30 FPS) to be the lowest acceptable number of frames per second that produces a smooth and responsive flight simulation experience for myself and my hardware. This preference will vary from person to person, system to system, and it is up to you to determine your own balance between visuals and performance & response.
DETERMINE YOUR BASE LINE PERFORMANCE
In my opinion, the best way to tune FSX for the best performance is to first determine a baseline level of performance. To do this, set all of the sliders to low, or off (all to the left), select your MONITOR'S NATIVE RESOLUTION, select "Unlimited" as your frame rate, and load the default flight in the Cessna 172SP. Once you are in the game, hit "SHIFT + Z" twice to bring up a frames per second counter in the upper left hand corner of your screen once you are airborne.
This will give you a baseline level of performance that should run very well on most systems. It won't be visually stunning, but that's the point. This first test is just to give you a general idea of how FSX performs and should be mostly CPU limited depending on what resolution you run this first test at.
Choose a geographic area that has every kind of terrain FSX can render. This includes water, mountains and urban cities with a few skyscrapers. This will represent a good sampling of the kind of performance you should expect overall.
The San Francisco Bay Area, CA, is a good area to test because it contains every single kind of terrain FSX can render within a very short distance of one another. Seattle, WA, is also another one along with Victoria, B.C. There are countless other areas around the world, but the main thing the area should have is a variety of different terrains, dense cities and bodies of water.
Now, take note of the average number of frames per second on the ground and in the air. It will fluctuate, but it should more or less hover around a certain number on average. This number is your average baseline frames per second and it should be fairly high (40s, 50s, maybe even 60s) given the very low settings at this point.
After you have discovered your baseline frames per second you can then use this number as a reference point to compare performance against as you add and increase more features like higher textures, more detailed terrain, AI Air Traffic, etc.
TAKE TIME TO TEST AND SMOOTH OUT YOUR FRAME RATE
After you have established your average frames per second, you then need to lock your frame rate to this number. Locking your frame rate forces FSX to only render that many frames per second and frees up CPU cycles for other things like aircraft systems simulation, aerodynamic calculations, etc.
It should be noted some users have reported better performance keeping their frames set to "Unlimited" instead of locking them. This is a personal preference and you will have to see what kind of performance you get with your frames locked, or unlocked and act accordingly.
Once you lock your average frames per second, you can start to increase the various sliders and see how they impact your average (locked?) frames per second. As stated, FSX will fluctuate, but your goal is to minimize drastic fluctuations.
For example, if your average frames per second is locked 35, you don't want the game dropping to 12, then going back up to 35, then back down to 20, every other second. You want to keep the fluctuations as close to your average frames per second as possible. An acceptable range is within four, or five frames of the average. Keeping fluctuations low helps maintain the smoothness of your game. Keeping a smooth flying experience is will also help FSX be responsive to your control input as well.
A general rule of thumb that applies to all video games is while your main goal a high number of frames per second, you should be striving for a more consistent number of frames per second even if it is low.
Now, the following is a more in-depth explanation and discussion about some of the different features you can use to fine tune your FSX experience. I only covered what I consider are the most important ones and those that seem to have the biggest impact on frames per second compared to the other settings you can change in FSX.
SETTINGS THAT GREATLY EFFECT FSX PERFORMANCE
Autogen (Autogenerated objects) - Autogen is randomly generated houses, buildings, trees and other objects that appear on the terrain as you fly above it to give it a more three dimensional appearance.
ACES Studio redesigned FSX's autogen to be more robust than previous versions of Flight Simulator. This is precisely why it has such negative impact on FPS. The performance hit comes from FSX being forced to render hundreds and hundreds of three dimensional objects (buildings and trees). For comparison, FS2004 rendered a maximum of 600 trees and 300 buildings per cell at maximum settings. FSX can render 45000 trees and 13000 buildings per cell at normal settings. As you can see, Autogen is a prime example where FSX users will have to make the choice between a more detailed world, or higher frames per second.
One way to reduce the number of autogen objects is to delete, or rename the "default.xml" file in the Autogen subfolder of the main FSX root directory.
I would advise new users simply RENAME this file from "default.xml" to "default.backup". This way, if they (or an addon) needs it, they can simply rename it to its original form. Like all things Flight Simulator related, users have reported various increases in performance by renaming, or deleting this file while others reported no improvement at all.
To help determine what you should set Autogen to you should consider what kind of flying you plan to do the most.
If you are a General Aviation pilot (Cessna; prop planes) and like to fly low to the ground, you are a VFR (Visual Flight Rules) pilot. If VFR is your flight method of choice, I recommend keeping the Autogen fairly high because it will increase the realism and visuals you see gazing out your cockpit windows.
If, however, on the other hand you are into the "heavies" (commercial jets), I recommend you turn Autogen to "sparse", or completely off. This is because you don't care about how many houses, or trees you can see from 35,000FT. The trade-off in performance will be worth it because the CPU cycles that used to be render the autogen are shifted to simulating the more complex systems found on modern airliners.
AI Traffic (Ground and Air) - These are computer controlled planes that takeoff and land at airports to simulate real world operations that are conducted on a daily basis. New to FSX, this also includes cars driving on the major highways and also ships and ferries near cities with large bodies of water.
All of these additional AI routines reduce the overall FPS because it adds yet another layer of information that must be processed by the CPU along with FSX's other core processes.
Turning all AI Traffic off can give a large boost in frames per second... But it can also reduce the world to a very lonely and empty place with no aircraft at airports, no cars on the roads, and no ships in major water ways. This is a personal decision you will have to make and you should always experiment with different settings such as no cars and ships, but maybe 35% aircraft, ,etc, etc.
Water Effects - The reflective sheen and animated wave effects.
One of the major areas FSX has dramatically improved over previous versions of Flight Simulator is water is now rendered more realistically than ever. It uses DirectX shaders for the improved visuals, and also includes animated surface movements like tac (wind) swells and surf. Beware, these two new features also are a hit to the frames per second as well.
So, for optimal frame rates I recommend keeping water set to around medium high ("Low 2.x") and have Special Effects set to low (all the way left). This way, you still get the new shader effects, but with a minimal FPS hit because the wave movement isn't being simulated any more (or at very low levels that have minimal impact).
Mesh Complexity - This is how detailed the geography is.
This includes mountains, hills, valleys and other natural occurrences. Truth be told, I don't believe there is much of a performance hit having it set to maximum (100), or not. Again, this depends on other settings, your average frames per second and where exactly you are flying.
For example, if you are island hopping in the Pacific, you can probably have mesh complexity set to 100 because 90% of the scenery is going to be flat ocean.
If on the other hand, you are flying through the Alps in a heavy snow storm practicing IFR (Instrument Flight Rules), you may have to adjust your mesh complexity because of the amount of peaks, hills, and mountains needed to simulate that particular environment. So, generally speaking this setting depends more on individual preference than anything else.
Scenery Complexity - This determines how many land marks and buildings are displayed.
One important area to note is for major cities like New York to be rendered with its recognizable Manhattan skyline... You must set the Scenery Complexity slider to 100.
This applies to every major city worldwide (Paris, London, Rome, etc.). This is because anything less than 100 means FSX will leave out major buildings and land marks to increase performance.
Service Packs - Patches to the game that improve performance and fix bugs.
Microsoft and ACES Studio have released two service packs (SP) for FSX. The first adds multicore CPU support and claims to greatly improve performance on dual and quad core systems. Users on various flight sim forums have reported great increases in frame rates while others have reported no increase at all. I recommend all FSX pilots install SP1 at the very least because of the reported performance increase from the default installation.
Service Pack 2 was more of a unifying Service Pack to make owners and non-owners of the Acceleration Expansion compatible in multiplayer. SP2 also includes a few more enhancements/bug fixes and also a DX10 preview mode for Windows Vista users. I would recommend installing the stand-alone SP2 and not the Acceleration Expansion (that contains SP2 and additional aircraft and scenery) unless of course, you want the added aircraft and new scenery.
FSX users should be aware that ACES made certain changes that are not compatible with (pre-)SP1 aircraft and addons in both SP2/Acceleration. As an example, some of the Carenado payware planes will not render properly with SP2/Acceleration installed. This is because a lot of the addons like this are ports from FS2004, and SP2 more or less did away with backwards compatibility. So, I would check to see if your favorite addons are SP2/Acceleration compatible before installing it. You can always un-install SP2/Acceleration, but you should always try and avoid this kind of maintenance for programs whenever you can.
I hope this entry provides some useful information you and other users can use to improve your FSX performance. In the end, it will come down to combination of hardware limitations and personal preference... But at the very least, this guide should give you a solid starting point on how and where to make start making adjustments to suit those preferences.
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